Sinclair and the 'Sunrise' Technology: The Deconstruction of a Myth (35 page)

One of the things that has always dominated Clive’s thinking is smallness. I have another client who has the same approach, but everything he does is perfect, (ibid.)

Years after the products had disappeared from the market, Sinclair confessed that the miniaturization issue was really nothing but a marketing device:

To miniaturize some things might be inelegant, but it is certainly inelegant to make things larger than they functionally need to be , assuming there is not some other benefit in making them larger. Once or twice we have made things deliberately small, like the radio kit. That was just a gimmick, to make it exciting for people to build so that they could say it was the tiniest radio in the world. (Practical Computing, July 1982.)

Gimmicks or not, the implication was that without a matchbox radio, or an electronic calculator or a micro the doubting consumer would somehow remain trapped in the past while the rest of the world moved on into a glowing technological future. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, such propaganda for the new age had little impact on the real world, since the manifestos were exclusively consumed by electronics enthusiasts who hardly needed convincing. Later, when Sinclair Research came to market the first generation of home computers, the effective divorce of a product from its application became a critical marketing strategy on which the development of the industry depended. It was essential that the consumer was convinced that the quality of a family’s future depended on the introduction of a computer into the home. Questions concerning the machine’s use were not to be allowed to stand in the way of its purchase.

There is no single explanation for the initial success of the home-computer industry or of Clive Sinclair’s role as one of its earliest and most privileged beneficiaries. However, there can be little doubt that for a while Sinclair Research’s association with the dependable image of Cambridge academia did much to promote the impression that personal computers were somehow a gift from Science (with a capital S) to the masses. While it can be argued that Sinclair helped take computers out of the stuffy world of the university and bring them into the home, it may equally be said that he used the musty kudos of Cambridge to help him establish the credentials of the project in the first place. We must be careful not to make too much of what was simply a subtle exploitation of a generalized faith in all things academic. Contrary to prevalent marketing philosophy, the consumer is not unfailingly gullible and is unlikely to conclude that a Cambridge product is necessarily stamped with the seal of scientific approval. Nevertheless, no one who has shown himself to be as concerned with personal and corporate image as Clive Sinclair could have resisted squeezing every drop of credibility-by-proxy from his relationship with the city and its halls of learning. As William Kay says of Sinclair’s move to Cambridge, ‘
It gave his business an academic gloss which did not harm to credibility, either then or later
’. (Tycoons, pp. 158-9.)

In short, Sinclair certainly took advantage of the fact that a company selling scientific instruments out of Cambridge looked considerably better than would an identical outfit operating from almost anywhere else in the country. ‘Science of Balham’ hardly fills the heart with confidence. On the other hand, it would be shortsighted to regard a desire for academic proximity as simply a calculated and perfectly legitimate marketing ploy. From the very early days, all the Sinclair companies relied extensively on external expertise for the development of new products. Now, as in 1961 when Sinclair first met Tim Eiloart, the founder of Cambridge Consultants Ltd, the city offers a wealth of freelance talent seeking to turn a respectable education into a quick buck.

The large number of graduates and undergraduates, who over the years have played a significant role in the creation of Sinclair products, can be regarded as the most obvious symptom of Clive Sinclair’s style of product development. Broadly speaking, it is clear that Sinclair applies a double standard when determining the level of R&D expenditure to be pumped into a project. As we have seen from John Grant’s account of the early development of the ZX range, when creating what Clive regards as bread-and-butter products like the instruments, calculators and computers, he is dedicated to doing things on the cheap, often to the extent that the finished product fails to maximize its market potential. Even the prestigious MetaLab accounted for only a tiny percentage of Research’s total expenditure:

We spend very little on R&D as a percentage of revenue ... The people resource represents, in my terms, not very much. The biggest investment you’re going to make in a project is the start-up production figure - maybe a million pounds for the first few batches - and the advertising, which certainly dwarfs the R&D spending. (Interview with Hugo Davenport, Director of Engineering, 22 October 1985.)

However, as far as Sir Clive’s obsessions are concerned - for example, developments such as the flat-screen television, the electric car and a wafer-scale chip - he is generous to the point of folly. By now it should be clear that there is little to suggest that the millions of Pounds sunk into the television and the C5 could ever have resulted n Products that had any hope of generating a sensible return on the investment. But where his pet projects are concerned, Sir Clive has a tendency to allow his heart to rule his head, and certainly will not allow fiscal considerations to stand in the way of his vision.

As a general rule, Sinclair feels more comfortable contracting out production and development than handling it in-house. Indeed, it seems that one of the worst stages of his career was the period from 1977 to 1979 when staff levels at Sinclair Radionics reached their peak. In 1977 the company employed around 350 people at a time when it was producing its calculators and the Microvision, and most employees were involved in production-line assembly. Sinclair has always maintained that it was these large numbers of workers that limited the company’s capacity to respond with sufficient speed to the collapse of the calculator market, and that the blame for such corporate inflexibility rested with his NEB partners. In retrospect, Sinclair regarded this turning point for his corporate style as a salutary lesson. In an interview with Fortune magazine (8 March 1982) he confessed, ‘
In a way... I owe a lot to the NEB inadvertently, because you know so much more the second time around; you can avoid the mistakes
.’ And as his interviewer, Myron Magnet, points out later in the article, ‘The chief lesson [Sinclair] learned is to keep his company as miniature as the machines he makes ...’

The small-is-beautiful principle is one that Sinclair adopted and voiced from the time he and Radionics parted company. Apart from arguing the dangers of a lack of flexibility, which he maintained to be inherent in employing a large workforce, in the early days of Sinclair Research Clive was suitably deprecating about his failures as a manager: ‘I’ve learned... to keep the organization small, because I’m not a great organizer of people, and so I find it best to subcontract everything that can be subcontracted’ (ibid.). This confessional stance is replicated three years later when Sinclair spoke to Guy Kewney the day after the announcement of Maxwell’s ‘rescue’ of Sinclair Research. Once again he voices his distaste for employing and administering large numbers of people, but this time reveals a curiously Victorian impression of the role of management:

I’ve never kidded anybody that I wanted to run a large company ... I hate having to boss people around, I hate having to deal with people running in saying, ‘Oh, what shall we do, there’s trouble at till, t’winders are all falling over’, and bringing you their troubles. (Microscope, 27 June 1985.)

Although there can be little doubt that the horrors of administration and worker-management interaction are a contributory factor to the formulation of Sinclair’s subcontracting policies, the appeal of a relatively small corporate wage bill can hardly be deemed a minor consideration. This said, when circumstances have dictated the acquisition of a sizeable workforce, the Sinclair management has shown itself surprisingly adept in the exploitation of local conditions. The peak workforce of 1977 was employed on the production lines at Enderby’s Mill at St Ives. Although conditions of employment could hardly be compared to those of the sweatshop, this definitively rural labour environment offered Sinclair a return on capital that must have been the envy of employers in the rest of the country. Sinclair transports shunted local women from villages in a 15-mile radius. Quite where such workers fit in Sir Clive’s vision of a society benefiting from the rewards of the new technology (let alone a ‘Golden Age’) is not clear. Nevertheless, the level of wages, coupled with incredibly low rents, points to the Radionics crisis as having its roots in growing R&D expenditure, a contracting market and a disdain for ‘bread-and-butter’ products rather than the ‘liability’ of a large workforce.

When complaining about the demands of life as a manager, Sir Clive invariably eulogizes the joys of frontline work in the lab. Although such statements do much to reinforce the popular image of Sinclair the boffin, there is no evidence that except in the very early days of Radionics he has played any significant part in the technicalities of product design or the day-to-day running of the research labs. Steven Vickers, who worked on the development of the first three of the ZX range of computers, maintains that Sinclair has a clear market image for a product, and intervenes in the development process only when results deviate from his original idea:

Clive would sort of stay aloof for a long time, and then suddenly he’d see something that didn’t fit in with his ideas of how things should be marketed and suddenly crash down like a ton of bricks and then go away again ... He knows more about hardware than software, but it’s difficult to know just how much he knows about hardware. He knows what’s cheap to make. (Interview, 23 July 1985.)

So while it’s clear that he undoubtedly feels more at home with his R&D teams than with management or production groups, it is difficult to know to what extent Sir Clive believes in the role of distracted boffin. Certainly public and media are comfortable to think of him in this role, and the persona was invaluable when Sinclair was still in the business of selling computers.

Many of Sinclair’s failings as a businessman are attributed to his lack of interest in money per se, and his dedication to his role as inventor over the grubby considerations of the accumulation of wealth. David Tebbutt, long-time friend of Sir Clive, is convinced that for Sinclair monetary gain is considerably less important than designing for the future and the realization of his visions. Tebbutt concedes, however, that it’s very rare for personal financial stability to become a source of anxiety for Sir Clive. These days, having removed the home-computer burden from his shoulders and sorted out the backing for his two pet projects, Sir Clive seems more than happy to slip into the role of the man of science lost in the distressingly fiscal considerations of the commercial world. At the same time, he goes to some lengths to make it clear that the concerns of the visionary are necessarily of more moment than the mundane machinations of management:

I’m dedicated to being an inventor ... Some people are dedicated journalists, some are dedicated managers. But managing is no job for amateurs, and I don’t enjoy it. In the lab you’re all working together, but when you’re managing, you’re constantly distracted by people bringing you little problems which you have to sort out for them. (Microscope, 27 June 1985.)

Throughout his career, Sinclair has poured scorn on his abilities as a manager, and the history of his companies does nothing to reinforce the suspicion that a successive failure to consolidate the rewards of success has much to do with the absence of an effective management team. This said, it is not enough to attribute such shortcomings to circumstance. Indeed, there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that, while apparently recognizing his own weaknesses in the administration and planning of his companies, in practice Sir Clive is disinclined to pass over the reins to anyone else. This view is shared by former Radionics MD Norman Hewett, who had this to say about Sinclair’s repeated claims that he lacks the ability to manage:

That’s what he says, but he doesn’t believe it really. He would tend to attribute problems to others not doing their jobs. (Interview, 16 October 1985.)

In autumn 1985, when Sinclair Research’s management structures were being firmed up, and the company was frantically courting the City for backing, spokesmen for the company were suddenly anxious to point out that Sir Clive’s managerial qualities had been much maligned. At worst, he was presented as a man who is quickly bored by the responsibilities of administration, and it was made clear that his confessions of inadequacy were merely the natural modesty of the renaissance man:

There is no point in Clive making every decision. Ninety-nine per cent of them are decisions which just bore him. He’s not going to worry about detailed nitty-gritty production schedules ... So that the reason that he’s been encouraged to develop the management structure is so that he’s freed to look at the things which interest him most ... The crucial thing is how many guys can one man manage directly. That’s the whole pivotal point. Up until that point you don’t need a [management] structure from the operational point of view, because that one man has the capacity to do it. Clive is quite remarkable - he can handle an awful lot of people by comparison with most. I would set the average limit at seven ... People can go on managing more people than they should do for quite extended Periods of time, but I would say that [Clive can directly manage] well over twenty people, which is quite staggering, and it might be higher than that. (Interview with Hugo Davenport, 22 October 1985.)